All vehicles come from the manufacturer with a designation of some sort; sometimes it's a name, a fictional word, or just numbers. But when a project gets more personal and starts to represent more than just mechanized motion, there is almost always a more singular alias that arises. That badge on the fender, that's what the manufacturer called it. What will you call it when it becomes yours?

It's becoming quite popular over the past decade for builders to create distinctive and memorable names as mnemonic devices for the builds that they want the hot rodding public to recall with ease. First Love, Ferrambo, Scarliner, Blowfish, Red Devil, OneLapCamaro, you type any of those into Google Images and get photos of those award-winning cars right away. Magazines are also notorious for this: Max Effort, EcoNova, g/28, and Project Talladega here at PHR for example.

In the past, those names, and sometimes their logos, are either airbrushed or pinstriped onto the car, or applied with a vinyl decal afterward. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but it does lack the level of finish that an emblem offers. Water jetting, laser cutting, and etching offer a significant step up since they allow for a piece of material to actually become an emblem. Casting is, of course, an option and has been employed since the beginning of cars, but finding qualified shops with artists who can do it well can be difficult, pricey, and require significant time. Technology has an answer, though.

We previously covered the capabilities of rapid prototyping and how it is going to continually change the face of hot rodding, thanks to the ease of creating complex, one-off pieces, and thanks to decreasing costs it's rapidly filtering down to the little touches on cars such as emblems. (Heck, we even saw an item on the news feed yesterday about a UPS store that had a 3-D SLA printer in addition to its standard line of paper printers.) After seeing custom emblems that looked exactly like factory equipment on a few cars, such as Greening Auto Company's Valiant project named "Pissed Off" (you'll see more on that elsewhere in this issue), we reached out to our friends at Greening and Forecast 3D to create something for our own Valiant.

Forecast 3D has amazing rapid prototyping capabilities, including an incredibly versatile form of 3-D printing called Stereo Lithography Apparatus, or SLA. Using a photosensitive resin, parts can be built layer by layer from scratch in short order. But enough description; the photos are more fun. Check out how the Violent Valiant got its own custom one-off emblems.

2/181. Our buddy Tavis Highlander has designed the look and logo for several PHR project cars, including the EcoNova, and now our ’68 Plymouth Valiant, which we’re christening the “Violent Valiant.” He’s even working with us on a more aggressive redesign of Max Effort, which you’ll see in an upcoming issue.

3/182. This is a screen grab of Highlander’s Adobe Illustrator workspace. He uses Illustrator to create vector artwork that translates easily to vinyl cutting, CAD, or printing. While creating emblem concepts for something like our Valiant, Highlander will reference stock emblems from the same vintage to find styles that work together. This way he can mash up different emblems, two stock Valiant ones in this case, tweak them to his liking, and come up with something that looks appropriate.

4/183. After a few different concepts, we chose one that combined the 1971-72 Valiant script with the block used on the 1969 Valiant 100 to create a final design that looks very stock Plymouth.

5/184. Using Highlander’s files, the talented Jason Norberg at Greening Auto created these 3-D versions that Forecast 3D will use to create exact duplicates.

6/185. The SLA machine Forecast 3D will be using is a Viper si by 3D Systems. It’s one of the smaller units they have, but it features a smaller, finer laser than most comparable machines, which outputs high-resolution parts with crisp details.

7/186. Here’s a simple overview of how this 3-D printing format works. Inside the SLA machine, there’s a vat of photosensitive resin. A laser moves around to draw the programmed operation in the resin, which hardens when exposed. The laser has a fixed focal point that moves back and forth and side to side on the X- and Y-axis inside the work area. The build platform moves up and down on the Z-axis to bring the portion of the part of the badge being built into the laser’s focal point. This combination of movement gives us 3-D printing capabilities and can make extremely precise movements to create finely detailed parts. What you’re seeing here is the laser at work laying down the first base of the emblem.

8/187. Every job begins with a support structure. The laser builds up what looks like lattice or scaffolding that secures the part to the build platform so it doesn’t float away. Once the support structure is built, and the badge begins to grow, the recoater slides across to smooth out the resin and remove bubbles in preparation for the next layer. Each layer is .0040-inch thick for standard resolution parts and two thousandths for high resolution.

9/188. After making dozens of passes laying down .0040 inch of resin at a time, we eventually have a complete emblem.

10/189. Here you can more clearly see the support structure on the bottom of the emblem. It may not appear so, but the structure is designed to be easily removed without affecting the part.

11/1810. With the badge building complete, the build platform is removed from the SLA machine and sent to the alcohol room where it’s washed in an alcohol bath.

12/1811. During this cleaning process, excess resin is removed, and the support structure is detached from the badge.

13/1812. Care is taken to remove any fine particles or contaminants before the emblem is taken to the last phase of the process.

14/1813. Next the emblem moves on to Post Curing Apparatus, or PCA, for a 30-minute blast of UV light which further hardens the resin.

15/1814. Here are the complete and cleaned emblems. Forecast3D offers multiple finish options for SLA parts depending on their client’s needs. Some require sanding, sand blasting, prep, and paint—all of which they handle in house. Our emblems are simply cleaned and shipped back to Greening Auto for custom finish work.

16/1815. Back at Greening, Jesse and his crew prep the emblems by scuffing them very carefully with gray Scotch-Brite, then using Glasurit 900 Wax & Grease Remover to remove oils. After that, Glasurit 90 Line Silver with custom-mixed Glasurit 923-450 satin clear is applied to create the illusion of an appropriately aged cast emblem to match our Valiant’s authentic patina paint and trim work.

17/1816. The final color is absolutely picture-perfect for the subtle look we want on this project, but it needs one last touch.

18/1817. Greening works with professional pinstriper Rick Harris (www.RickHarrispinstriping.com) on their high-end builds and relied upon his steady hand to dab in red lettering to accentuate the “Violent” part of the emblem. Now we have a one-off badge that captures our project’s sleeper persona perfectly! Want your own? Call Greening Auto for estimates and Tavis Highlander if you need ideas!